The development of small towns in Britain

Abstract

This chapter traces the evolution of small urban places over the centuries and developments that built upon an already quick pace of change. It considers the spatial pattern of urban development as it affected the small town sector, and deals with the functions and internal geographical structure of the small towns themselves for the period from c. 1851 to 1951. During the nineteenth century considerable change took place on the British urban scene, the basic cause summed up as 'steam' by Weber, more fully the processes of industrialisation and modernisation and all that accompanied them. The detail of life in the small towns of late Victorian Britain continued to depend upon the type of town it was. Small-town life in Britain in mid-century had in some ways remained stable with many of the Victorian and Edwardian societies remaining in existence in this era before mass television.